


3 Times Jigen's Friends Betrayed Him (And One Time He Betrayed His Enemy)

by Seiberwing



Category: Lupin III
Genre: Arrests, Art Theft, Crossdressing, Duelling, Gangs, Gen, Gladiators, Gunplay, Non-Chronological, Partnership, Power of Friendship, Referenced Maple Syrup Heist, Swordplay, Vignettes, disguises, fight to the death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:08:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23735878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seiberwing/pseuds/Seiberwing
Summary: Four short fics about Jigen's chaotic relationship with his colleagues and rival.Chapter 1: Deadly Duel of the Canadian Colosseum (Jigen vs. Goemon)Chapter 2: Lupin's Loose Ends (Jigen vs. Lupin)Chapter 3: But Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend (Jigen vs. Fujiko)Chapter 4: Taking Pops for a Ride (Jigen vs. Zenigata)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 79





	1. Deadly Duel of the Canadian Colosseum

**Author's Note:**

> The [Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Canadian_Maple_Syrup_Heist) was a genuine real thing that happened and, despite my apologies to the many fine Canadians in this fandom, was too good to not include as something Lupin would get involved in. I don't actually know much about Canada but given how this show loves to run on broad national stereotypes, maple syrup heist felt apropos as a setup.

The thing about guns was that, even if you had no idea what you were doing, you were inevitably guaranteed to hit something. It wouldn't necessarily be the thing you were aiming at but _something_ \- the floor, the window, the neighbor's cat outside - was going to get a bullet in it. Once you got good with a gun you could work on having that thing you hit be the thing you wanted to have a bullet in it. When you got very, very good, you could work on the far more delicate art of not hitting something.

Jigen considered himself to be very, very good.

When Lupin had invited them on a trip to Canada to steal maple syrup of all things (something he'd referred to as 'liquid gold' until they'd pressed him hard enough to say exactly what the truck they were stealing would contain), Jigen considered this heist to already be one of the dumbest things he'd done in his career. With Lupin, of course, you could always count on a dumb situation to turn both dumb and weird.

Now here he was, at some Canadian faux-Roman colosseum where a barrel-chested man with a ridiculously Quebecois accent who called himself Titus was giving them orders from atop his throne. Soldiers on each side of Titus were dressed in Centurion armor, and several women in diaphanous robes draped themselves over and around his throne.

The orders were, as you would expect from a man in that position who wore a toga and laurel crown as casual wear, murder related.

Jigen stood on one side of the stone circle forming the core of the mock Colosseum. Goemon stood on the other side, a smear of dried blood on his cheek. Jigen lifted an eyebrow to communicate _You okay?_

A tiny dip of Goemon's chin indicated _Yes, I'm fine._

A tiny curl of the fingers. _Think we're about to do some duel to the death last man standing bullshit._

A responding tensing of the legs. _I'm ready if you are._

They waited while Caligula-lite did his dumb speech about the manliness of gladiatorial combat, focusing instead on the platter being lowered into the middle of the circle by unnecessarily elaborate pulley systems. When its cover was removed, Jigen saw the light glinting off his magnum, lying nestled against Goemon's Zantetsuken. 

"At the sound of this bell, you shall begin." Titus gestured grandiously to a large bell next to him, which was engraved with his name and far too many eagles. "The man who lives will be permitted to come stand by my side as my new manservant and help me as I begin my conquest of the new Roman Republic upon this fertile barbarian land of Quebec! The loser shall be fed to the ravenous lions, as is tradition." He pointed down at a set of large cages holding what were...at least some form of big cats, though they looked more bored than ravenous, and looked to actually be pumas that someone had glued wigs to. 

"Vivamus, moriendum est! May the gods favor the boldest!"

Jigen held up his hands, his right with fingers outspread and his left with finger-and-thumb out like a pretend gun. "Sorry about this, Goemon. With Lupin out of the picture I gotta think about my job prospects."

Goemon bowed, his expression set firm. "Then I will make sure your death will be honorable."

A scantily-clad attendant who was hopefully getting paid by the hour to feed Titus his grapes slammed a hammer into the bell, letting out a low, dull tone. Both men charged, fingers making contact with their weapons at the same instant. Jigen got off a single shot past Goemon's neck before the sword whipped out, taking a few whiskers off the tip of his beard as Jigen tumbled backwards.

An average man with a gun would be dead by now, if Goemon wanted them dead. An average man with a sword would be dead by now, if Jigen wanted them dead. Put the both of them together and it was a matter of who had the fastest arm, whether Jigen could pull the trigger before Goemon got close enough to cut him or whether Goemon could strike before the gun fired again. 

Of course all of that assumed they actually wanted to kill each other.

Jigen took aim at where Goemon was, trusting that by the time the bullet reached him the samurai would be long gone. He could feel the wind from the sword but only once did it actually touch his flesh, cutting the tiniest of shavings off his wrist amidst flecks of shredded Givenchy suit jacket. 

Other hitmen criticized Jigen for carrying a gun that only held six bullets. When you were as good as he was, you didn't need to rely on extra ammo. Jigen made every shot count, until the last whipped through the sleeve of Goemon's kimono and left a round hole in the Colosseum wall. 

His arms slowly fell, lowering the Magnum.

"That was your last bullet, Jigen!" Goemon called out, slowly walking towards him. "Unlike you, my weapon does not expend itself and then fall useless." He held Zantetsuken before him. "Will you surrender now and meet your fate with dignity?"

Goemon could display a stunning lack of self-awareness sometimes but he did know how to monologue when he wanted to. Call it a game of ping-pong played with their audience's eyes, keep their attention where it was wanted and away from the hand furtively reloading the Magnum with the lone bullet their captor's lieutenant had pressed into his jacket pocket before they were led out to the gladiator pits.

_This should give you an edge. Don't lose to that sword-wielding throwback - I bet five million on your sorry ass._

Jigen got to his knees, Magnum between his palms. Just to ramp up the drama he crossed himself and then feigned saying a prayer for last-minute forgiveness for his many crimes. 

The sword raised, light flashing off it. "If you meet Lupin in the afterlife, greet him for me."

At the last moment, Jigen's head jerked upward, flashing a wild grin below the brim of his hat. "Do it yourself!"

The sword stabbed downward, the gun fired, the tiny crowd of Roman cosplayers roared in amazement. Goemon let out a sickening gurgle and toppled over onto Jigen's body, twitching and going limp. They lay together on the ground in a morbid embrace, weapons dropped from their hands. 

Titus managed to be both infuriated and touched. His booming speech waxed eloquent about the power of such combat and how he intended to erect an obelisk in memory of two such brave men, unwilling to give up at any cost, gone too soon for this unclear and undeserving world that did not see such warriors more than a few times in a generation and oh god run the lions were loose.

Jigen smirked against Goemon's cheek. They'd been too busy with the drama to notice exactly where his 'missed shots' had gone, and one had been aimed smack at the cage door for the pumas. 

One open hand and one finger gun made for seven fingers total, signalling 'I have seven shots' to a man who had known Jigen for more years than he wanted to count. Titus might not be as inbred as your average emperor but he was definitely stupider than most of them, to pit two friends against each other and assume they wouldn't collaborate against him.

They wanted until the pounding footsteps and screams faded into the distance before Goemon lifted his head. The two men picked each other up and, arm in arm, wandered out to the gates of the Colloseum. Sitting out front was a large tanker truck, stamped with an emblem of a stylized maple tree. Lupin leaned out of the passenger side window and wolf-whistled at the both of them.

"You guys done playing around with Biggus Dickus and the Spartan brigade? We gotta drive this stuff to the border by sunset."

Jigen slid into the passenger seat while Goemon, as he often did for reasons Jigen still didn't understand, took a seat on the roof of the cab. "Yeah, we're done. Just had to stop in to feed this guy's pets."


	2. Lupin's Loose Ends

"Take it from someone who's known Lupin the Third much longer than you have, Mr. Jigen. He's not coming back for you," said the inspector, with all the fatherly support and compassion that he hadn't had two hours ago when he'd been aggressively tackling Jigen to the ground and cuffing every limb in sight.

Jigen cast his gaze on the interrogation table and let out a mild grunt.

"I know you used to work for the mafia, back in America. Lupin doesn't have their values. The big families, they take care of their people and you take care of them in return. That's the arrangement. I used to work yakuza cases in Japan, I get it. Even if they were my enemy, I could respect their structure and their devotion." 

Jigen snorted. The closest this guy probably got to respecting the mob was watching Godfather a couple times a year. Points for trying, but that was all the points he'd give him.

The inspector leaned in. He had the kind of strong jaw and broad shoulders that Jigen usually found attractive, but he had a firm policy of never falling for cops. Later--much later--he'd make an exception for Inspector Koichi Zenigata of ICPO but right now he didn't know this guy from a New York hotdog. "But Lupin the Third's a much different breed. He's a hyena feeding on society's scraps. He has no loyalties to anyone - not family, not country, not his partners. He takes what he wants from you and moves on to the next person, like a mosquito. I guarantee, he's not even thinking about you right now. He's found some beautiful woman to woo with that diamond and he's sitting on the beach with her right now while you rot in here. Does that seem fair to you, Mr. Jigen?"

Jigen lifted his head, still unsteady from being slammed into the pavement and sat on by half a dozen cops. His sharp chin stuck out as he gazed at the inspector through the thicket of his coarse bangs and asked, "Who's Lupin? Never met the guy."

The inspector sighed and pressed his knuckles into his brow. "We caught you right next to him, Mr. Jigen."

"Huh. Funny coincidence."

"You stepped in front of my--look, don't throw away your life for a teenager trapped in a man's body. He left you behind. You can even the score and help yourself at the same time."

"Not how I do things. And like I said, I've never met a Lupin." Jigen leaned back in his chair and carefully put his chained feet up on the interrogation room table, inches from the inspector's face. "Don't suppose I can bum a smoke while I wait?"

A knock on the door interrupted whatever the inspector's next play would be. It opened, admitting the nervous head of a young police officer.

"Sir?"

"Hm?"

The inspector came over and tilted his head, listening. Jigen feigned disinterest, watching from under his bangs. Both men were trying to be quiet but whispering didn't come naturally to them, and Jigen could clearly catch the words 'Lupin', 'witness', and 'outside'.

"You wait right here," the inspector ordered. Jigen raised his shackled hands to indicate yes, he was physically incapable of going anywhere that wasn't within two inches of the table this very man had cuffed him to. The door closed, and when they returned there was a small, hunched over woman between them. She wore a flowered shawl around her bony shoulders and a grin of Buddha-caliber serenity graced her wizened features. A tiny pocket book hung between her hands. 

"Is that the man?" asked the young policeman, gesturing to Jigen. The woman took a few steps towards him and craned her neck forward.

"Oh, I'd need to hear his voice. As I told you, my eyesight's starting to go but my hearing's still sharp. Why, I could tell you exactly what the nice young man upstairs gets up to in the evenings with his girlfriend, they've been testing out this harness--"

"Ma'am, about the robbery attempt--"

"And he's really not used to having things up his back alley, the poor boy, but she's--"

"MADAME."

"Oh!" The old woman giggled. "Sorry, I'm so distractable these days. So much is going on." She raised her thick shades and peered at Jigen. Her nostrils flared briefly. "He smells right. Got that hint of cigarettes and gunpowder, just like my poor Michael who passed away two years ago. I almost married him, you know, but after my Paul died we did have fun--"

"Madame, please," the inspector said, almost whimpering.

The old woman took another step towards Jigen. Jigen kept very still, in case any movement was taken as aggression from a shackled prisoner toward a woman who clearly had the room eating out of her hand. 

"Hmm." The old woman tapped her finger against her thickly-painted lips. " Let me hear you say 'Let's blow this joint, boss' for me?"

The inspector looked at him pointedly. Jigen offered a weak shrug and mumbled the requested line.

"Mmm, mmm, that does sound like him." Another step closer, until the woman's face was nearly against Jigen's. "Oh, now say "And drinks are on me tonight."

Over the tops of the thick shades Jigen could just barely see a pair of round, sharp eyes, free of any cataracts and possessed of a familiar devilish gleam. "And...and drinks are on me tonight," he murmured, feeling fluttering hope start to rise in his chest.

There was the softest click as the lock to his handcuffs popped open. 

"Yep. This is the one," said the old lady, right before her pocketbook exploded in a flash of light and smoke. The shackles around JIgen's ankles seemed to melt away and he was dragged to his feet, towed out the door and down the hallway. He could barely see where they were going but the old woman guided them steadily and precisely. Voices from out of the smoke screamed that they 'went that way!', and Jigen gradually realized all of them were coming from the same source, projecting and shifting his voice to confuse their pursuers. 

Then they were outside, beneath the piercing blue sky Jigen had wondered if he'd ever see again. Lupin, now unmasked but still in the old lady's shawl and housecoat, towed him to one of the police cars.

"Here, put this on. I feel like you're naked without it." Lupin slipped a hand into his shawl and came out with a battered, familiar object that he shook out into the form of JIgen's hat. Jigen tucked it onto his head.

"That's more like it. Oh, and I snatched this out of the police lockup. I wouldn't make you leave your baby girl behind." WIthout looking Jigen knew exactly what Lupin would put into his hands next. His fingers wrapped possessively around the cool metal of the Magnum, caressing the length of the barrel. Lupin adjusted the mirror, humming happily to himself.

"Why come back for me?"

"Eh? What, you wanted to spend more time in the old man's company?"

"Heh. I think I'm not his type." Jigen spun the cylinder of his gun fondly as the car roared out of the station. Behind them, police officers piled into the other cars in the parking lot, only to find that Lupin had taken the only one without all four tires punctured. "But you were free and clear with the diamond. You could be in another country by now."

"I don't like leaving jobs half-done. Besides, you're mine." Lupin patted his shoulder. "Of course I'd come back for you."

Jigen wasn't sure if Lupin meant mine as in 'my partner' or mine as in 'my property'. With the way Lupin was smiling at him as they plowed down the highway, sirens wailing, he also wasn't much sure he cared.


	3. But Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My thanks to the Discord chat that explained to me how the fuck guns and the cleaning of guns do work, as I've never shot anything more powerful than a Nerf rifle in my delicate little life.

"Can you get us a closer look, or zoom up higher?"

"Any closer and he'll shoot us down, boss. He's taken out one of my drones already, and these things aren't cheap"

Max's drone hovered above the cliffside, telescoping lens zooming in on the high rocks at the edge. Every so often a bony arm would reach out, fire off a quick shot, and vanish into the crevice- sometimes it wouldn't even shoot, just make their besiegers balk and then tuck down again before they realized no shot was fired. 

"Switching to infrared, that should at least give us a better picture of what's going on over there…"

Max flipped a few switches and the screen darkened. Leaning over him, Baxter could make out the two shapes of Lupin's infamous collaborators, one tall and lanky and the other a litlte more ample. Jigen Daisuke, and a woman their intel said was likely Mine Fujiko, had been caught stealing the Örn Diamond from Baxter's artifact trafficking operation an hour ago. They'd run for it, but gotten penned in around one of the higher cliffs by the ocean. 

"He'll run out of bullets eventually, right?" Baxter mused. 

"Intel says he's an uncannily good shot. Maybe he won't--hey, what are they doing?" 

The two figures on infrared had gone from huddling next to each other to intertwining, as if they were wrestling over something. A shot rang out, and the lankier figure fell to the ground. Max leaned in closer, squinting.

The curvier figure hovered over the lanky one for a few moments, then bodily shoved its heat signature out of view. Seconds later, a hand holding a large diamond clutched in a golden eagle's claw appeared over the edge of the rocks.

Baxter smiled and rubbed his hands together. 

"Looks like Miss Mine's just changed sides."

\--

Cold was good, Jigen mused. Cold water numbed the body, which numbed pain. Water washed away blood and brought your body temperature down, making you even harder to detect. 

He wished it wasn't saltwater, though. Stung like a bitch and wasn't exactly great for his magnum, either.

He surfaced under a rocky overhang, where a pile of driftwood and scrub brush hid him from sight. Jigen's suit jacket had long been lost to the sea, and he stripped out of the rest of his clothes to let them dry out of viewing range of the tiny drone that kept buzzing over the ocean, searching for his corpse. 

Stripped to his underwear, feeling the cold sink into his skin every place that it touched the rocks, Jigen let out a long slow breath. 

Right. Wound had stopped bleeding, at least. By the angle of the sun he had a few hours before it got dark, and they'd probably give up the search by then. He slipped backwards in the crevice, making space on the closest thing he could find to a flat surface. Then, willing his icy fingers not to shake, he carefully began to take the Magnum apart.

Salt deposits in the barrel could build up and rust, making the entire thing explode in his hand the first time he fired a shot. The bullets, too, might not have been as high quality as he had been told, and any one of them might refuse to fire properly. Even if they did they might not eject, and his six shooter would turn into a four-shooter, with two empty casings he couldn't remove without disassembling it in between the live rounds. 

The sound of the ocean mixed with the sound of his pulse beating in his eardrums, and Jigen tried to drown out both as he listened for approaching footsteps. Half-naked and with his gun in pieces, he'd be a target so easy a child could kill him. One false move in surprise and he could drop a piece into the water, and there went the ball game.

By the time the sunken sun was painting the sea in deep purples, Jigen had finished cleaning his gun and his clothes had finished drying on the rocks. He'd never been more grateful to put pants on.

\---

"So where's the body?"

"Gave it over to the sharks. You think I want Lupin knowing I iced his bestie? He'll never talk to me again. But if I tell him I had nothing to do with it and he can't even find a body, he'll believe anything I say."

"You're one cold woman, Miss Mine."

"You have to be, in this world."

Fujiko was honestly not that bad of a date. She actually listened to him, something he could never seem to get most women to do, and she laughed at his jokes. In the course of several hours Baxter had gone from intending to kill her as soon as she stopped being entertaining to considering asking her out after they got back into town and he turned Örn Diamond into delicious cash.

All that got put on hold when machine gun fire ripped through the top of his tent. Fujiko dove for the floor, Baxter falling on top of her.

"Your boyfriend?" he gasped.

"I told you, Lupin's not my boyfriend. And this isn't his style. Your girlfriend?"

"Told you I was single, swee--"

Another burst of gunfire caved in one of the tent poles, half-burying them in cloth.

"Let's see your hands, friend," called out a voice that made Fujiko quiver. 

"Oh my god, it's Jigen," whispered Fujiko, clinging tightly to the tiny pistol in her hands like a security blanket. Her eyes were wide and wet, nearly tearing up as she huddled by Baxter's side. "How'd he survive? Please, don't let him get me!"

Baxter raised one bare hand outside of the bundle of collapsed tent. He fancied he could feel the heat of the next bullet that passed by it before he jerked it back in. "Jigen? Let's talk this out, okay?"

"I've had too shit of a day for talking. I want my back pay, and I want it now."

"Please," muttered Fujiko. "Don't tell him I'm in here. He'll kill me!"

Baxter slipped an arm around her, feigning comfort only to grab her derringer out of her hands and grapple her into a headlock, gun aimed under her chin.

"I got something even better than back pay," he called out, smug. As Fujiko wriggled in his arms he stood up, shaking off the tent folds. "I got the bitch who shot you. You want revenge, right? The back's the most sensitive place to get stabbed, y'know."

Jigen, looking only somewhat worse for wear, was standing in the middle of his gang's encampment. In the darkness he couldn't see where the rest of his gang was - given Jigen's skill, there was a good chance they were laying in the shadows with holes in their foreheads. Jigen himself was strung with bandoliers and straps from the guns he'd taken as trophies, with one of them nestled comfortably under his arm.

Jigen had been just one man, an injured one, and barely broken a sweat against a gang of twenty. Baxter didn't favor his odds going mano a mano with a man like that, and so kept Fujiko pressed tightly to his body as protection. 

"Let's make a deal. You let me live and I let you shoot her yourself. Not as satisfying if I do it, right?" 

He could feel Fujiko shuddering like a scared rabbit in his arms. Jigen eyed them both up thoughtfully. His expression was impossible to read with his eyes hidden in the shadow of his battered hat.

"Jigen-chan...Daisuke...please…" Fujiko's eyes were wide and endearing, watery with rising tears.

Jigen snorted. "Yeah, fuck it. Send her over. Lupin'll get over it eventually. God, I've been waiting to put one in you for years, you little…" He flashed his teeth a moment and then seemed to recover, beckoning with his free hand.

Baxter was happy to shove Fujiko in his direction and then back away into the remains of his tent, hands up. Jigen grabbed Fujiko by the hair, still pointing the gun at Baxter as they backed away.

"Now turn around, Baxter. Close your eyes, count to a hundred, and then you can turn back around and forget any of this ever happened."

Baxter could hear the sound of two sets of footsteps moving away, one firm and one dragging its kitten heels as their owner softly sobbed. At fifty, he heard a scream and a gunshot, and at sixty-seven the sound of a jeep engine starting up. At one hundred and five, Baxter turned to find himself alone in the ruins of his camp, surrounded by unconscious bodies and the faint, rising awareness that he'd done something incredibly stupid.

\--   
"Geeze, with acting that thick, you'd make a porn star look like an Oscar winner."

"Can it, Jigen."

"You really think he bought it?"

"Of course. And by the time he realizes we took his diamond _and_ his phone, we'll be too far away to matter."

Fujiko tugged the ribbon from her hair, letting it stream freely in the wind as Jigen drove the jeep around the winding coastal roads back towards the city. On the jeep's dashboard, the Örn Diamond glinted in the moonlight, reflecting the glowing tips of two cigarettes.

Fujiko laughed, letting a gout of smoke spill from her lips as she flicked through Baxter's phone and transferred the data to her own. A diamond was pretty great, but a treasure hunter's client list, complete with drop locations and storage codes, meant the potential for a whole lot more.

Fujiko nudged at Jigen's arm playfully. "We should work together more often, Jigen-chan."

Jigen rolled his eyes. "Yeah, sure. Only if next time I get to be the honeytrap and you take the dramatic dive off the cliff."

"Next gay criminal we run into, he's all yours."


	4. Taking Pops for a Ride (Jigen vs Zenigata)

There was a definite point after when Jigen moved into working for Lupin on more than a contract basis that he stopped being able to get jobs with anyone else. By that point he didn't mind; most of the other people who'd have wanted him were scum anyway. Before that point, though, he could still get bodyguard gigs here and there, and he was well known enough that people would overlook the whole 'has dedicated his existence to backing up a pervert monkey with sticky fingers and a pants retention problem' thing.

It was one of those times that he found himself guarding a supremely dull gangster whose vice of choice was the collecting of illegal art. Jigen lounged nonchalantly on a crate watching Signer preen and fawn over his newest acquisitions, showing them off to a man who alleged himself to be a man who could acquire art that many found...difficult to acquire by legitimate means. 

The dealer had a large, drooping mustache and wore shaded half-moon glasses, slouching in a way that almost concealed his massive height and talking in slow, dopey tones. To the outside eye, he'd have looked half-asleep.

"Well, I think we have a business arrangement," he said, rubbing his hands and mumbling something to himself. "What do you think, Mr. Signer?"

Before Signer could answer, Jigen let out a loud grunt that echoed through the warehouse and heaved himself to his feet. Signer rolled his eyes as Jigen sauntered bow-legged over to them, one hand in his pocket.

"I wouldn't advise making any deals with him, sir."

Signer rolled his eyes. "Jigen, I didn't bring you on for you to be a business consultant."

"Oh, I don't know shit about business. I just know plenty about weasely liars." HIs hand whipped upward, cutting off the art dealer's sputtering protests by putting the barrel of the Magnum in his face. 

"Jigen, what the fuck do you think you're doing? Our sources vetted him!"

"Then maybe you need to vet your sources." Jigen grabbed the man's face and ripped it right off, mustache and all.

"It'd fool most people, but I'm familiar with Lupin the Third's mask-making techniques, and this guy's learned everything he knows about disguises from copying Lupin."

Every gun in the place was up now, which was a lot of guns. The man who was not an art dealer slowly, resignedly raised his hands. 

"Then this guy's also a former partner of his?"

Jigen laughed and tore the rest of the mask away, showing a cleft chin below a strong jaw. "Oh, no, even worse. This is the cop who likes to chase him around. You just tried to buy a Rembrandt off Inspector Zenigata, ICPO."

-

"I thought you might hold a grudge, but I didn't think you'd be the type to want vengeance taken out in blood."

"I'm a killer, Pops. You know that. I'm as scum as the rest of them in there."

Zenigata said something under his breath as Jigen marched him out through the back door of the warehouse. A cut on his eyebrow was bleeding where Signer had taken a few ineffectual but passionate swings at him before Jigen had cut in and offered to 'dump him in the harbor'. 

Jigen tapped Zenigata's shoulder with the barrel of his gun. "You want to speak up a little?"

"Said I thought you weren't, until now."

"Your mistake. Get in the car, we're going for a drive."

A stupider man might have been tempted to grab the gun from Jigen's hand as they drove, with JIgen's eyes on the road and his magnum pointed sideways at Zenigata. Zenigata was far too aware of how fast that trigger finger could move to push his luck that far.

They drove in silence for a long time before Zenigata eventually broke in with "Where are we going?"

"Does it matter?"

"You've been driving down the pier for a while now. You could have shot me and dumped the body anywhere."

"I don't need critique on my murder techniques from a cop."

"You're not actually planning on going back there, are you?"

A tiny smile sprouted on Jigen's scraggly face. "Nope. Not when the Wasp Gang and the state police are going to be converging on the place in twenty minutes. There's probably not going to be much left there but a big smoking crater by the end of the night."

Zenigata turned, slowly enough to telegraph that he wasn't about to go for the Magnum, and looked in the back seat of the car. It was covered in tarps, one of which had slipped bar far enough to uncover the edge of a rolled-up canvas. 

"You made off with all his art," he said, a note of what was almost appreciation in his voice. "Right under his nose. And you used me as an excuse to get out of the building before the shooting started."

"And he's going to be a little busy to notice that it hasn't all gone up in smoke, once the bullets start flying." The tiny smile broadened.

"So you've been working for Lupin this entire time!"

"Less for, more with, but sure, Pops."

"Hah! I knew it!"

Zenigata sat back, somehow satisfied in the knowledge that he'd at least found some tiny tie to Lupin in all this mess, never mind that he was still technically a prisoner with a gun pointed at him. 

"Wait. You said the state police was going to be there too. Why wouldn't they tell us if they knew I was going to be there undercover?"

"Yeah, might want to really think hard on that one, Pops."

"...they set me up?"

"You're investigating art trafficking and corruption. You're known for being good. Can you imagine why the state police wouldn't want someone good at their job working that angle?"

Zenigata scowled. "Every damn time," he mumbled. 

Jigen patted him on the shoulder with the butt of the magnum. "Make you a deal. You pretend I knocked you out, threw you in a ditch, and you had to hitchhike back to the station, and I'll actually drop you at this hole-in-the-wall place I know so you can have the best pizza of your life and you can take the bus back into the city instead."

"S'tempting offer--wait. You couldn't have known I would be there, right?"

"Nah. Happy accident for you." 

"But you had this planned long in advance. So you could have done your getaway without ever tipping me off."

"You complaining about not being in the middle of a shoot-out? Seems pretty ungrateful to me, but if you want me to turn around--"

"No, no! I mean, why do it at all? Why not just leave me there? Lupin wouldn't even know if you did."

The car slowly turned into the parking lot of a tiny restaurant with a neon sign reading BIG ED'S PIZZA, over a mural of a girthy man holding a dripping slice of pie in one hand and a Coke bottle in the other. Jigen's gun finally lowered and he sat back, tugging his wide-brimmed hat down over his eyes. 

"Guess stealing just wouldn't be the same without you, Pops. Now get the hell out of my car and stop asking dumb questions."


End file.
